Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue #24.5 October/November 2021 i Australian Country

Vanessa and Chris Radford are planting chickpeas at Ibon, their sheep and crop farm near Rowena on the north-western plains of NSW, so they are spending long hours in the tractor. The phone reception is dodgy, but every time she comes into range, Vanessa’s mobile starts pinging like crazy with customers enquiring about her lampshades. Vanessa is the creative force behind LightenUp Handmade, and she explains that this is what happens every time her business receives a boost from Buy From the Bush (BFTB). It’s not exactly news that BFTB is the incredibly successful marketing platform established in 2019 by Warren farmer and entrepreneur Grace Brennan to help rural businesses showcase their wares to boost the bush economy during the drought. More drought, floods, bushfires and a pandemic down the…

Attitude and gratitude are the keys to a successful family business, according to Queensland strawberry farmer Laura Wells. Laura is the “L” in TSL Family Farms, which she runs with her sisters, Tracey Denman and Samantha Stewart. The siblings officially took over the family farm from their parents, Marilyn and Merv Schiffke, in 2018 and strawberries are pretty much part of their DNA as they’ve been helping out on farm since they were in primary school. “We’ve been working alongside each other since we were kids and we are grateful to have had that upbringing,” Laura says. “But attitude is important, too, and it’s vital that we respect as well as love each other.” TSL Family Farms works alongside its neighbours, Stothart Family Farms. Together, they farm 100 acres (40…

The story begins, as it often does, at the pub. Not a drop had passed her lips, but Susan Gray was instantly intoxicated by The Dromedary Hotel in the tiny timber town of Central Tilba, on the far south coast of NSW. Years of drought had leached away vitality in the public house that had connected history and community with heart for more than 125 years. The paint was peeling. There was a For Sale sign out front. “I have no idea why Jeremy and I bought it,” Susan confesses. “We were insane. We were a couple of Sydney-based airport planners with no ambition to own a pub and I hadn’t even pulled a beer behind a bar at that point. Three years later, I still wonder: ‘What have we…

Sydney-based Hayden Wright works in a creative agency making memorable messages for the digital world. Since picking up a camera while at university in Queensland, he’s developed his photography skills across more than a decade’s holidays and nature walks. He particularly enjoys shooting landscapes but also relishes the challenges of candid portraits. As a photographer, he manipulates light in fractions of a second, always chasing the perfect combination of situation and expression. In his remaining spare time, Hayden lives in the moment as both a teacher and performer of the unpredictable craft of improv theatre.…

Be careful what you wish for. To all appearances, Todd Alexander and Jeff Ross had it all — a beautifully renovated house in Sydney’s inner west, successful corporate careers with salaries to match and a great bunch of friends to help them enjoy all the benefits of city living. But that nagging “is that all there is” feeling kept gnawing away, so in 2012 they astonished family and friends by throwing it all in to move to Block Eight, a vineyard and olive grove where they could build accommodation villas at Belford in the Hunter Valley. What followed has been an extraordinary journey into the highs and lows of country living, which Todd has documented in two memoirs, Thirty Thousand Bottles of Wine and a Pig Called Helga, published in…

It’s a story more romantic than any of the unions that have been celebrated in the former Tarome church. When Helen and Terry Roebig relinquished their busy Brisbane lives in 2019, they imagined they were moving to Mount Alford in Queensland’s Scenic Rim for a more relaxed life in a stylish century-old Queenslander on the 43-acre (17-hectare) Dulhunty farm. The property came with Vanbery Cottage, a cute little B&B in a separate building that began life in the central Queensland coastal town of Maryborough but was moved to the south-east Queensland village of Tarome in 1919. There it served as the Tarome primary school for more than 70 years, when it was moved to its present location. These days, in the wake of the pandemic, Helen and Terry can barely…

visittilba.com.au Four Winds Festival events are now scheduled throughout the year: fourwinds.com.au WHERE TO STAY Foxglove Gardens, Tilba Tilba: A 100-year-old cottage surrounded by 3.5 acres (1.4 hectares) with fragrant gardens alive in the autumn with lilies, camellias, bluebells and cherry blossoms; and in winter with viburnum and Daphne, hellebores, magnolias and snowdrop. thefoxglovegardens.com Stunning Farm Studio, Central Tilba. riparide.com/listings/3472-stunning-farm-studio WHAT TO DO Montague Island Adventures: Many tours combine seal snorkelling with an excellent National Parks and Wildlife tour of the Island’s lighthouse (built in 1881). montagueislandadventures.com.au Southbound Escapes: A range of different picnic/ dining and e-bike hire/tour options are available southboundescapes.com WHERE TO EAT Mimosa, Murrah. mimosawines.com.au Dromedary Hotel, Central Tilba: Locals come from a big catchment area — Bega to Bateman’s Bay — for a menu of delicately…

Are you in love with your shots of the Australian countryside? Do you enjoy photographing extraordinary people and places when you are travelling around Australia? Then you could be honoured in the Australian Country Magazine Photography Competition. This is a competition that seeks to reward photography that captures the essence of Australian Country. Running from September 2021, entry is open to anyone and FREE. We will be awarding prizes and you could end up having your work in a showcase photo essay in the magazine. You could win a prize in any of our categories - Country Vista, Farm Life, Country Culture, Face of Country, Country Home, Recovered Country and Walk in Nature, or take out the grand trophy for a collection! ENTER TODAY Go to: australiancountry.com.au/photographycompetition…

OCTOBER 17 (NSW) BLACKVILLE ARTS & MARKET DAY This annual community arts event brings more than 50 vendors from across NSW to the Liverpool Plains in a celebration of arts and crafts made or sourced from the bush. This year’s market day will raise money to support a second staff member at the Blackville Public School and to help Tamworth Family Support Services and women and their children living in the women’s refuge. Entry to the event is $5 for adults and children under 12 will be free. blackvillemarkets.com NOVEMBER 27-28 (QLD) NINDIGULLY PIG RACES Queensland’s oldest pub on the banks of the Moonie River was first licensed in 1864 and has become a beacon on the tourist map for its great hospitality and quirky events, often benefitting the Royal…

It’s a bold move to ask total strangers if you can see their bedrooms, but it’s a strategy that works every time for interior designer Tracy Adams. “The first thing I ask a new client is if I can look in their wardrobes,” she says. “I’m not really interested in the made-up you or your carefully curated house space. I need to see the real you, and the thing that reveals that is your clothes.” Tracy has lived in the NSW Upper Hunter town of Muswellbrook since she moved there from Newcastle as an 18-year-old au pair. She met her husband, Jason, who worked in the auto-parts industry, in a local pub and they’ve been together ever since. Jason had arrived with his family from Port Augusta as a school…

Creating a major tourist destination couldn’t have been further from Rowan Clark’s mind when he went looking for ways to entertain his kids one late-summer’s afternoon. But as it turned out, that’s precisely what happened and the Rupertswood Farm Crop Maze is now a huge event on the Tasmanian calendar. Rowan and his wife, Anna, and their children, Molly, aged 13, Lindesay, 12, and Kate, nine, live at Hagley near Launceston in Tasmania’s north. Their farm, which has been in the Clark family since the 1930s, runs prime lambs and a range of crops that include shallots, grasses for seed and fodder crops. “We had sorghum in one year and the kids were at a loose end,” Anna recalls. “So Rowan decided to cut some lanes through the crop for…

WHERE BIRDS SING AND WILDFLOWERS DANCE JASON TYNDALL, NATURE PLAY SA, $49.95 In case we didn’t know it already, the events of the past year have highlighted the importance of connection with the great outdoors. As this book from Nature Play SA, a not-for-profit aimed at encouraging children into the fresh air, landed on our desk, half of Australia was in lockdown. So it was an exquisite form of torture to flick through the pages of this field guide to South Australia’s national parks. It’s part poetry anthology, part inspirational thought, blended with beautiful photography and illustrations of the plants and animals that inhabit the parks. SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU? DR NORMAN SWAN, HACHETTE AUSTRALIA, $32.99 What does Norman think? They say that in times…